Fontainebleau and the history of bouldering.

Training ground for the Alps

LaCrux's history of bouldering (17 March 2026) says members of the French Alpine Club (CAF) used the boulders of the Fontainebleau forest from 1874 to train for Alpine climbing. At that stage bouldering was preparation for the mountains, not a sport of its own.

That began to change in 1924, when the Groupe de Bleau was founded. Its members were known as the Bleausards, and LaCrux calls it probably the first bouldering group in the world.

LaCrux says Pierre Allain developed an early rubber-soled climbing shoe in the 1930s. The shoe's later history is on equipment history.

Fontainebleau milestones

LaCrux lists these problems as landmarks, with grades on the Font scale:

The name of Allain's 1934 problem differs between versions of the same LaCrux article. The text we read calls it La Fissure des Alpinistes; a search summary of the article names it Angle Allain, at Cuvier Rempart. Neither could be confirmed.

The 1984 entry comes from PlanetMountain, whose headline calls C'etait Demain the first 8A boulder problem in Fontainebleau. We saw only the headline and a search summary, because the page refused our request.

The colour circuits

LaCrux and Climbing magazine (the latter seen as a search summary) say Fred Bernick marked the first colour-coded circuit at Fontainebleau, in the Cuvier Rempart area, in 1947. Climbing magazine describes a circuit as a chain of problems meant to imitate the sustained effort of a long mountain route. LaCrux says the colour-coded route system used in many climbing gyms comes from the Fontainebleau circuits.

John Gill and American bouldering

In the United States, according to Wikipedia and a search summary of Climbing magazine, the gymnast John Gill treated bouldering as a sport in its own right from the 1950s, when most American climbers still saw it as practice.

• Chalk. Wikipedia says Gill brought gymnastic chalk into American rock climbing in the mid-1950s, and that its use spread internationally from there. UKClimbing, seen as a search summary, dates his first use to the autumn of 1954, when he was a first-year student at Georgia Tech.
• Movement. Wikipedia says Gill introduced controlled dynamic movement as a preferred technique and valued form and grace.
• Writing. According to Wikipedia, he published "The Art of Bouldering" in the American Alpine Journal in 1969.
• Problems. LaCrux lists Gill problems in the Tetons that it places at 7B (1958) and 7C (1959) in modern Font terms.

Today's rules on chalk at some crags are covered on chalk and chalk rules.

Grading boulders

Gill proposed a relative scale running from B1 to B3. Climbing magazine, seen as a search summary, says it never caught on, partly because the grades shifted as standards rose.

John "Verm" Sherman is credited with the V scale (LaCrux and Climbing magazine). Wikipedia says he set it out in his 1991 Hueco Tanks guidebook and that the letter comes from his nickname. LaCrux says the Font and V scales as used today were developed in the 1980s and 1990s. How the two scales are paired by different publishers is on grade comparison tables.

The first crash pads

Climbing magazine (updated 9 March 2026) says the first commercial crash pad was the Sketch Pad of 1992, made by John Sherman and Bruce Pottenger of Kinnaloa. It describes a fabric pad with backpack straps and about 2 inches of foam in two densities, measuring roughly 2.5 by 3.5 feet. Wikipedia ties the earliest pads to Hueco Tanks, Texas.

The date of the first pad is given several ways:

• 1992: Climbing magazine and Wikipedia.
• 1994: a University of Oregon paper, seen as a search summary.
• 1989: a Mountain Project forum post, seen as a search summary, claims pads were on sale then. That is one person's recollection.

Pads as equipment are described on crash pads.

The grade firsts, and why they move

Claims to the first boulder at a grade are unstable, because grades can be revised later and claims differ by region.

• First 8A. PlanetMountain calls C'etait Demain (1984) the first 8A in Fontainebleau. LaCrux lists two earlier problems by Jim Holloway in Colorado in 1977, Meathook at 8A and Slapshot at 8B. So the "first 8A" depends on the region and on later regrading.
• Radja (1996). LaCrux says Fred Nicole's problem was first graded 8B+ and is now considered 8B.
• First 8C. LaCrux says Nicole's Dreamtime (2000) was once thought the first 8C but is now given 8B+, and lists Markus Bock's Gossip (2002) at 8C.
• First 9A. LaCrux lists Nalle Hukkataival's Burden of Dreams (2016) as the first 9A boulder.
• First 9A+. Elias Iagnemma's Exodia (2025) has been reported as the first 9A+, but LaCrux calls that unconfirmed.

LaCrux also traces bouldering's path into competition and the Olympics; that story is on competition climbing. The sport as it is practised now is described on bouldering.